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Her eyes soften.
“You’re awake,” she murmurs.
I can’t talk. It would only be cries of pain. I can’t even sit up. Anytime my abdominal muscles contract, the pain deep inside my lower belly worsens.
She ditches the gloves and mask and comes to me. She grabs a small pump, a cuff that she wraps around my upper arm, and fits the end of her stethoscope between my skin and the cuff. She puts the other end to her ears and checks her watch as she presses the little pump that leads to me.
Her sorry look replaces her focus when she takes it all from me.
“Your blood pressure is very low,” she tells me softly. Her accent is the same as the men from yesterday. “You need a lot of rest.”
Her gaze roams from my head, taking the disgusting state I must be in, and lowers to my legs. She struggles to swallow. “I…You’ve got—I mean…I stitched you.” Her face scrunches up. “Inside. And outside.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. I need to wake up because this can’t be real.
“I’m sorry…” she whispers low. Her hand comes to my shoulder, and I startle, opening my eyes again. “Sorry,” she says as she hurriedly takes it away.
She takes a deep breath. “Aleksei,” the mention of his name makes me want to throw up, “is a bad man.”
A bad man.
If only he was a bad man.
If only he wasjustabad. Man.
“He brought you here after he and his men…were…done.” She squeezes her eyes, knowing there is no right way to say this. “He insisted he didn’t want you to die. He will be back for you.”
“Help me.” My voice is barely a whispered rasp. “Help me leave.”
She shakes her head. “If I help, my sister…dead. Or worse.” Her eyes dart to my legs again. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
She can’t do anything. Because who would want their sister in the hands of a monster when she’s just witnessed what he can do to a woman’s body.
I close my eyes, even though I don’t think I have any tears left to cry. They were all forced out of me yesterday.
A door opens, and I barely stop myself from crying out when my body tenses. Every single one of my muscles is aching.
A man walks in. His blonde hair is the first thing I notice. Then it’s his dark suit. The same kind my brother Nate wears all the time. Expensive, made to measure. Money suits.
His light blue eyes don’t even glance at me. He’s looking at the man in the other bed.
“Anya,” he says calmly. He closes the door behind him, and she stiffens.
“Mr. Volkov. Hel—Hello.”
This is not Aleksei Volkov, yet I don’t know enough about their organization to know which family member he is.
His voice is genuinely curious when he asks, “Why is Valentin asleep?”
“B-because I had to extract the bullet from the wound, Sir. I couldn’t keep him awake.”
“Wake him. Now.”
“I can’t…”
“He’s got names for me. I want them, and I don’t want them in an hour. I want them right now.”
“He gave them to me.” She hurries to the steel platter on her trolley, and her face falls.
